by Sylvia Frost
Heartbound
Sylvia Frost
Darkmance Publishing
Contents
Copyright
Also by Sylvia Frost
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Epilogue
Afterword
BBW and the Beast
Copyright © 2015 by Sylvia Frost All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Cover by Sylvia Frost of Sfrostcovers.com Edited by Carol Davis
Acknowledgments: Thank go to my patient readers. I can only hope that I’ve written a book worth waiting for.
Also by Sylvia Frost
The Moonfate Serial: Moonbound
Huntbound
Bloodbound
Or buy the whole box set… coming soon.
For more information on the Moonfate serial, sign up for my newsletter at Sylviafrost.com
* * *
BBW and the Prince
A FULL-LENGTH shifter retelling of Cinderella.
Cynthia Cinders gives her wolf the slip, only to realize she's also given him the slipper. Can he use it to capture her and stake his claim on the curvy beauty?
BBW and the Beast
A shifter retelling of Beauty and the Beast
When Bel's father ruins a million dollar rose, she makes a bargain with a werewolf who wants her for his own.
1
Hunters. They dog the heels of history, searching for a monster to kill or a dragon to slay in the hope of becoming heroes. But what they don’t know is that a white knight can’t be bathed in blood. And no family has shed more blood than the Stromwells.
Beasts, Blood & Bonds: A History of Werebeasts and Their Mates
By Dr. Nina M. Strike
I don’t scream when Orion is shot. Stefania does. Her cry is so loud it feels like my own as it penetrates the walls of the cabin from her position outside the doorway. “Stromwell!”
I’m on my belly in the loft, still hidden underneath the quilt, so I don’t see the source of the gunfire. Through the slats of the railing all I catch is a shadow falling. I don’t even hear Orion hit the floor. My ears ring and my throat swells. Orion. My Orion.
The gunman steps through the doorway, his shadow splintering the light pouring through the cabin’s entryway. No, not his shadow. Hers. Before the darkness of the cabin shades her I catch the outline of her face. She’s older, but not old. Late forties, maybe, and familiar. Like a long-forgotten cousin. She raises the gun, cocking her gaze along the sightline of the barrel, aiming both a foot above my head.
I don’t breathe. I want to gather the power crackling at the edges of my consciousness and turn it into my werecall, but a voice in my head reminds me that the gunwoman can probably get a shot off before my command reaches her ears. Bullets are faster than sound, and if I speak up, she’ll know where to aim.
The floorboards of the cabin creak as the woman eases forward. She hasn’t seen me yet.
On my wrist my matemark throbs like a wound. I take in a slow, silent breath. Then, closing my eyes, I lean into the hollowness of my fear and make myself nothing but a vessel for sound. I’m going to save Orion. No one is going to fucking die this time.
I part my lips.
Stefania bursts through the doorway. “What the fuck are you doing, Stromwell?”
The gunwoman and I both flinch at the same moment. She flicks her gaze away from the space above me, and I let out a fraction of air from my lungs, losing my tenuous control.
“Protecting Williams, as we agreed,” the gunwoman says.
“Yes, protect Artemis by taking her away from North, not by shooting him.”
I try to wrangle my breath back, but am distracted by Stefania’s words. Stefania called the D.C. Bureau, and they sent the gunwoman? Stefania caused this? I feel nothing at her betrayal. I feel nothing for anything.
“Calm down, Agent Strike. It’s not silver. He’s not human. He’ll heal in time.” The gunwoman’s words are harsh and professional, but a homey lilt lurks beneath her short declarative sentences. I know her voice.
“He’s barely breathing,” Stefania hisses, and dips out of my sight, kneeling beside where Orion fell.
“Quiet,” the woman placates in a whisper too gentle for her profession. The wood groans again as she turns back to me. “Williams. I have a gun. You saw what I did with it, and you heard why. It isn’t safe for you here. So you’re going to need to come with us for your own protection.”
Now. I have to do it now.
This time my inhalation isn’t slow or careful, but a gasp so quick it burns my throat. My lower back muscles expand along with my belly, pressing against the mattress. Instead of emptying myself I grow to encompass the force of the werecall. My soul feels like it’s splitting at the seams, stuffed with anger and magic.
I am powerful. I am not a victim. Not again. Never again. It’s my turn to save him.
“Drop the gun.”
It takes me a moment to realize that the resonant voice echoing through the cabin is my own. Stefania and the woman have no such hesitation. The gunwoman lunges toward the stairs, and Stefania springs upward from her position kneeling by Orion.
“Artemis,” Stefania calls. “You don’t understand. Orion isn’t who you think he is.”
The gunwoman says nothing, but fingertip by fingertip, she lets go of the gun. It tumbles to the floor. Whether this surprises her or enrages her, I can’t tell. Her eyes are inscrutable in the darkness.
“We’re doing this to keep you safe,” Stefania begs. “Orion’s f—”
“Shut up and stay still,” I command. This werecall has less force than the first, the words pushed out and dull.
I watch Stefania and the woman both carefully, waiting for one of them to reach for the gun lying on the floor. But they stay frozen in place, like we’re playing a schoolyard game of statues.
Once I’m sure they’re not going to go anywhere, I stand up slowly, wrapping myself in the quilt to hide my nakedness. I mean to never take my eyes off the two intruders, but that quickly becomes impossible. The farther I rise from the bed, the better I can see Orion.
He’s sprawled on the floor below the one window. Fresh morning light illuminates his face and bare chest. His face is as still and sharp as an Antarctic landscape. There’s no blood. Not even a bullet hole in his chest. His enhanced healing must have already sealed the wound. He shouldn’t even be unconscious.
Unless the bullet really was silver.
“No,” I whisper.
I stumble down the stairs, my eyes never leaving his body. Waiting, waiting for his chest to rise, for it to move. It never does. When I reach the bottom step, I finally look back to the women.
I instantly realize my mistake. Instead of seeing the still-frozen face of Stefania, I’m confronted with the barrel of a gun, longer and leaner than the one the gunwoman pulled on Orion.
But the gun’s not what makes my heart stop.
It’s her face.
I realize now how I know her.
I breathe out her name like a curse. “Lola?”
“Speak another word and I shoot you,” The woman who is Lola but isn’t Lola doesn’t say it like a threat. She might as well have just requested me to count down the cash drawer.
Confusion swirls in my head, but I obey. All I can do is stare, certain that if I tilt my head the right way she’ll transform back into the generically sinister FBSI agent I was expecting.
The Lola I know is always caked in makeup, with teased curly hair, but this woman is artfully streamlined, sharpened by shadows and highlights, brows not drawn in thick with pencil but instead left thin. She looks about as much like Lola as I look like my dead doppelganger, but the resemblance is still unshakable. It’s in her eyes. They’re wrinkled with time and pain and loss. Kind eyes. But not honest ones.
“But you’re—”
Lola takes a step forward and the muzzle of the gun brushes against my cheek like the caress of her hand. “FBSI, Artemis. National branch. We have reason to believe that Agent North is affiliated with a dangerous group of werebeast revolutionaries responsible for your parents’ murder. We’re removing you from this location for your own protection.”
I freeze, not quite processing her words.
They can’t be true. Orion couldn’t. Orion wouldn’t.
Stefania’s betrayal makes sense. She must have found something on the USB drive she decoded that made her assume Orion was involved with my parents’ murder. Just a paranoid over-reaction. So she called the Washington, D.C. FBSI, thinking that maybe they had faked my death to protect me from Orion.
But Lola? She’s nothing more than a human woman who offered me a scrap of kindness when no one else did. She heard me sing. She gave me three hundred dollars. She hired me in spite of my incredibly spotty resume.
My lips twist as I realize that all the evidence I bring forward to defend Lola only damns her further.
She was guarding me. But not because she cared. It was her job.
The three hundred dollars? That was her encouraging me to run again. The job—that was their way of keeping tabs on me. I run through all the other times I’ve run, a lost job here, a were scare there—how many of those were even real, I wonder. How many were manipulations by the FBSI? Manipulations by her.
Lola must read the revelation on my face. And now that she’s stripped of her veneer, I can see her true expression for the first time too. I wish it was coldly professional. Instead her eyes are filled with the same warmth they were when she shoved that wad of money into my hands what feels like a hundred years ago. The same warmth and the same pity.
“I’m sorry,” she says.
I can tell that she means every syllable, even as she brings the gun to my chest.
And fires.
2
We know very little of the world of demons and angels. All we have are names: Astrum. Heaven. Stars. All ultimately useless. We’ve been to the moon and stared into deep space. We saw no winged creatures and no fiery devils. But the word astrum has another meaning in ancient Werelatin, one buried in nuance. For a long time historical linguists believed that this second meaning was merely an offshoot. But they were wrong. It is the second meaning that came first, that is far more ancient. Dream.
Beasts, Blood & Bonds: A History of Werebeasts and Their Mates
By Dr. Nina M. Strike
I wake up in a dream I know isn’t mine.
In my dream I’m always trapped inside a tent, reliving the moments of my parents’ deaths over and over again, listening to them sing the same songs beside the same campfire that’s more smoke than warmth.
But not now. Not anymore.
Now it’s winter, and the world is trembling like a heat wave on the highway as flurries drift downward from a gray afternoon sky. Snow coats the tall, dark pines above me. Of all the dreams the matemark has ever given me, this one feels the most unreal.
I press two fingers against my chest. There’s no wound where Lola shot me, but it still hurts. After she pulled the trigger, there was a low thwap, a pricking, and a moment when I stared downward in shock, looking at the hypodermic needle puncturing through the blanket and my skin. I must have passed out a few seconds later.
Lola. Jesus Christ. “Surprised” doesn’t even begin to scratch the surface of the shock coursing through me. How could she be FBSI? But then, looking at the facts again, how could she be anything else?
I should’ve known better. No one is that nice without an agenda. Good, yes. But not nice. Both Lawrence and Orion have been good to me. Lawrence followed me as I ran from town to town, went along with my crazily cautious plans to keep my weremate from finding me. But he never would’ve given me three hundred dollars with no questions asked. Friends ask questions. And Orion—he helped me try to find Lawrence and believed me when I told him that I was Artemis Williams, but he never allowed me to run. Never allowed me to pretend that I was anything other than his.
There are always strings. Always ties and reasons. I should’ve guessed that Lola had strings of her own, and I should’ve cared who was pulling them.
And now, because I haven’t, Lawrence is kidnapped, and Orion…
Fuck.
The winter air needles into my bare skin. Regret will get me nothing. This may be a dream, but it feels just real enough that I know if it doesn’t end soon I’ll become hypothermic. At least I’m wearing clothes, my regular ensemble of jeans and a t-shirt.
I peer through the milky brightness of the forest, shivering. The air tastes like Orion’s kisses, sharp and fresh, but I see him nowhere.
“Orion!” My call echoes in the silence for far longer than it should.
There is no response, but in the distance, a dark shape that I would’ve sworn was a tree shifts.
Snow crackles underneath my feet as I take a few steps forward toward the shadow, more to keep some kind of warmth flowing through my limbs than because I’m sure the speck is Orion. Thankfully, while it is winter, it’s not as cold as it should be, given the weather. I’ll have hours instead of minutes.
The shadow is moving fast. I don’t realize how fast until I try making my way through the drifts myself. Even though I have no idea who else it would be besides Orion, my matemark doesn’t throb in recognition.
The blot stops.
“Orion, is that you?” I mean it to be a yell, but it comes out as a pant.
The silhouette has started moving again, but this time it’s coming toward me. My stomach falls what feels like a couple of stories.
“Orion!” Panic scratches at my throat, but even that tastes flat.
The shadow still hasn’t responded to my cry, but continues its movements through the trees. It doesn’t walk with any kind of purpose, but weaves between the branches and the brightness, like a shark circling its prey. Orion wouldn’t waste time. He would walk straight toward me.
“Artemis?”
Orion.
My first reaction to hearing him is instant relief. The muscles in my back unknot and my stomach calms, but only for a moment. Then I realize where his voice is coming from.
I whirl around in the opposite direction from the shadow, toward Orion.
Whoever the shadow is, it’s not Orion.
This time I don’t wait. I run into the woods, away from the shadow, not caring as I stumble over roots half-buried by snow. My toes would be blistering in pain from being stubbed so many times if they weren’t already numb.
The farther I go, the thicker the silence blanketing the forest becomes, the blurrier the trees. It’s as if the dream is getting tireder and tireder, stripping away detail after detail until only the outlines of existence are left.
I don’t turn around to see if the shadow is one of those details the dream has eliminated.
“Artemis.”
Orion’s cry just barely breaks the quiet, but it’s enough of a clue that I veer left. Then I see him. He’s sitting on the cold ground, leaning up against the trunk of a Ponderosa pine, half-covered
in snow. His skin is so pale he blends right in.
I risk a glance over my shoulder. The blot is gone. For now.
“Orion,” I call as I wade through the now shin-high drifts toward him. I don’t know what else to say besides his name. Promises of his safety would ring false, and promises of my own feelings would ring too true. I can barely acknowledge the warmth in my chest that seeing him causes, let alone label it.
His eyelashes don’t flutter, but he groans again. “You came. I was sure you would leave me.” He wheezes a cynical chuckle. “I was so sure you’d be just like him.”
The closer I get to him, the tighter my gut clenches. This is not the Orion I know. His hands are splayed out from his body, leaving his naked torso vulnerable. His white-gold hair shades his closed eyes, and his breathing is ragged.
When I’m a foot away from him I fall to his side, and make up the rest of the distance on my knees as I reach out to him. My finger glides over the edge of his naked shoulder blade, and I almost recoil. His skin is so cold.
“Lola said it wasn’t a silver bullet,” I murmur, refusing to process the man sprawled in front of me. “She said you’ll be fine.”
“And you believe her? You and Stefania both. Fools.” The corners of his blue lips try to curl into a sad smile.
I whisper my fingers through his hair, trying to soothe him. “But you’re immune to silver.”
He twitches at my touch like a small animal caught in a trap. “Resistant, not immune.” His eyes struggle open with what must be a monumental force of will, and I’m caught once again in his kaleidoscope gaze.
“But the pain doesn’t matter. You’re here. You haven’t left.” He tries to laugh again, but this time it transforms into a grimace.
I cut him off with a kiss. Every other moment we’ve had together has been tainted by my own self-centered anxieties. About my parents’ deaths, about losing my sense of self within the bond between us, but there’s none of that now. As he lies there, possibly dying, his only words are for me and my only feelings for him.